Masayoshi Son

Chairman, President & CEO, Softbank Corp.

Masayoshi Son is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Corp. Mr. Son founded SoftBank in 1981. In recent years Mr. Son has consolidated several arms under the central SoftBank brand. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in economics and is one of the richest men in Japan.

Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. studio has made a bid to acquire a majority stake in the online video company DramaFever, according to people familiar with the matter, less than a year after Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. bought it for $100 million.

Instacart, the same-day grocery delivery startup, will allow some of its contractor workers to become part-time employees, as regulators more closely scrutinize the workforce of so-called on-demand companies.

Japan’s SoftBank Corp. said Wednesday that it would invest $1 billion in South Korea’s largest mobile commerce company Coupang as it aggressively increases investments in overseas Internet companies. The deal, which the companies said is the largest Internet investment in South Korea’s history, will add SoftBank to a roster of private investors in Coupang that also includes BlackRock Inc.,Sequoia Capital...

SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son will step down as chairman of Yahoo Japan's board of directors to be replaced by Nikesh Arora, a former Google executive recently named as a likely successor of the Japanese telecommunications and Internet giant.

Your daily roundup of news from The Wall Street Journal related to Japan: SoftBank Corp. Chief Executive Masayoshi Son on Monday named as his heir apparent the head of its U.S.-based Internet investment arm, as he vowed to significantly boost the Japanese company’s overseas presence following its 2013 takeover of U.S. mobile operator Sprint Corp.